The taste for Gothic tales and poems, focusing on themes of magic, terror and romance, was the great popular cultural phenomenon of the late eighteenth century. The images in this show suggest some of the parallels and exchanges between the literary Gothic and the visual arts. A range of artists is displayed here in this presentation.

 International Gothic Mary Magdalene in St. John Cathedral in Torun.

Gothic art was a Medieval art

movement that developed in France out of Romanesque art in the mid-12th century, led by the

concurrent development of

Gothic architecture. It spread to all of

Western Europe, but took over art more completely north of

the Alps, never quite effacing more classical styles in

Italy. In the late 14th century, the

sophisticated court style of International

Gothic developed, which continued to evolve until the late

15th century. In many areas,

especially Germany, Late Gothic art

continued well into the 16th century.

Joseph WrightA Philosopher by Lamplight 1769Derby Museums and Art Gallery

An old man in the costume of

a hermit or philosopher

contemplates human bones in a lamp-lit cave, while two small

men or boys dressed as

pilgrims (the shells in the hats identify

them as such) approach with

trepidation. The exact subject of this painting is uncertain; it may relate to

several different literary sources.

Wright has been more concerned with creating a sense of weird mystery; note the strange

discrepancy of scale between the hermit and the young men.

John British Dixon after                     Joshua Reynolds

Ugolino 1773Trustees of The British Museum

This print reproduces Reynolds’ painting of the imprisonment of Count Ugolino de Gherardeschi

(d.1288), from Dante’s Inferno (1319-21). Thrown into prison after a political intrigue, Ugolino was left

to starve along with two of his sons and two grandchildren. The painting represents the moment when he hears the door being permanently sealed,

and he is suddenly awakened to his dreadful fate. He will eventually commit a horrid act of cannibalism.

Joseph WrightStudy for 'The Captive King' 

circa 1772-1773Pen and wash on paper

Derby Museums and Art Gallery

This drawing has been linked to a lost painting of ‘Guy de Lusignan in Prison’. The detail of the crucifix leaning against the pillar suggests a

setting in the crusades. Guy was a Frankish king, defeated by the Saracens (middleeastern Muslims)

in 1187 and taken prisoner by them. Wright sometimes struggled with perspective; the

annotations are by his friend, P.P. Burnett, who he had asked for help in this respect.

Thomas Ryder, after Joseph Wright

The Captive published by John and Josiah Boydell, 

1 October 1786Stipple engraving

Derby Museums and Art Gallery

This print reproduces a painting of an episode in Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (1768).

The novel comprises the reflections of the sensitive traveller, Yorick. In Paris, threatened with arrest, he reflects upon the terrors of the Bastille, in a section titled ‘The Captive’. By focussing imaginatively on a single, suffering prisoner, Yorick is able to conjure the deepest emotions, which the reader is invited

to share.

John DownmanRobert, Duke of Normandy, 

in Prison 1779Oil on copper, 

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven

This painting represents a horrid subject from British history. Robert, Duke of Normandy (1054-1134), the eldest son of William the Conqueror, was imprisoned by his own brother, Henry, with

whom he had argued, in 1106. He spent the rest of his life incarcerated, dying in Cardiff prison.

According to legend, Robert was cruelly blinded by having hot metal bowls pushed into his eyes.

John Raphael Smith after Henry Fuseli

Belisane and Percival under The Enchantment of Urma 

from The provenzal tale of Kyot published by John Raphael Smith, 

25 August 1782Mezzotint on paper

Kunsthaus, Zürich.

This print reproduces a lost painting and represents a Gothic scene of Fuseli’s

invention. An evil wizard, watches over an imprisoned maiden and an enchanted knight (Percival). The velvety qualities of mezzotint were seen as peculiarly appropriate to Gothic

subjects of this sort.

Thomas RobinsonThe Hermit of Warkworth 1793

Oil on canvas,  Collection of Sir Robert Goff

The subject is from Thomas

Percy’s poemThe Hermit of

Warkworth (1771). The Hermit

weeps as he tells the tragic tale of Sir Bertram and

Isabel to a pair of eloped lovers. In the background,

Sir Bertram mourns by the

side of Isabel, the women he loved

but who died accidentally by his sword. The

Hermit’s narrative climaxes with the revelation that he was that ill-fated

hero.

Philip James De LoutherbourgVisitor to a Moonlit Churchyard 1790Oil on canvas

From the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art,

 New Haven

A figure stands in the overgrown ruins

of an abbey, contemplating the remnants of an old painting showing the Resurrection.

Above the figure of Christ a sundial throws a long

moonlight shadow, suggesting the

imminence of death and the possibility

of Christian salvation. The ruin is identifiable as

Tintern Abbey in the Wye Valley. This was one of the

most-visited tourist sites of the late

eighteenth-century, favoured because

of its emotive historical

associations with the Protestant Reformation.

Henry FuseliHuon and Amanda with The Dead 

Alphonso 1804-1805Oil on canvas 

From from The Barrett Collection, Dallas

The romantic hero Huon comforts his

lover Amanda, when they

discover the body of the goodly

hermit Alphonso. Fuseli painted this scene as one of a series of twelve

canvases commissioned by

the publisher Caddell & Davis as

illustrations to a new English edition of

Christoph Martin Wieland’s epic

German poem Oberon(178

0). The poem focuses on the adventures of

Huon, sent on a mission to a

fantasy Baghdad by the emperor Charlemagne.

Maria CoswayNightscene: A Woman and Two 

Children, One Apparently Dead, at Seashore 1800Brown ink and wash, 

heightened with white, on paper

Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, 

The New York Public Library, Astor, 

Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

This drawing, is from a group of designs created by Cosway to illustrate the

poem The Wintry Day  by Mary Robinson (1758-1800). Robinson’s poem contrasts

the fates of the rich and the poor. The latter undergo a variety of Gothic travails, in this case on a ‘bleak and barren heath’.

Maria CoswayPrison Scene circa 1785-1800

Brown ink and wash, heightened in white, on paper

Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and 

Photographs, The New York Public Library, 

Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.

This design also illustrates Mary Robinson’s poem The Wintry Day (1800). It is one of a set

of drawings published as prints in 1804. It represents the sad fate of the poor, suffering ‘on

the prison’s flinty floor’. The publisher felt he had to apologize for the artist’s exaggerated

style: ‘Mrs Cosway’s designs, it must be admitted, are sometimes eccentric, but it is the

eccentricity of genius’.

Richard CoswayA Nun Surprising a Monk Kissing a 

Nun in a Church Interior circa 1785-1800

Pencil and watercolour on paper, Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden 

Foundations.

Nuns feature heavily in the erotic literature and art of the eighteenth century. For readers in the Protestant world, the rituals and institutions of Catholicism were as titillating as much as they were morally reprehensible. Gothic novelists

made the most of such associations by returning repeatedly to medieval Italy or Spain

as a setting.